


For When The Sunset Turns To Gold

by CescaLR



Category: Chronicles of Narnia (Movies), Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Torchwood
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Gen, Growing Up, Moving On, One Shot, POV Edmund Pevensie, POV Lucy Pevensie, POV Peter Pevensie, POV Susan Pevensie, POV Third Person, Post-Narnia, The Problem of Susan, basically there's little elements of hp and drw but t t they're minor, likeee i watched prince caspian again and i was sad ish sooo here, non canonical character survival yeah i'm not killing the pevensies, tHANK U
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2020-04-07 05:22:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19078327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CescaLR/pseuds/CescaLR
Summary: Narnia ends. But it lives on.





	For When The Sunset Turns To Gold

**Author's Note:**

> Oh look a post-films narnia AU.

Magic is real in this world, as it is in many others. Lucy can feel it; in the breeze, the way the wind seems to whisper delightful songs in her ears. In the brightness of the sun on a summer's day, and the way the trees creak to her in greeting. Some of the other children think her strange, she knows; it is in the way they look at her, when they think she can't see, the way the wind carries their murmured words alongside its beautiful song. 

Like in Narnia, like in all manner of worlds that must exist, somewhere beyond Here, magic in Lucy's own round little earth is multifaceted. Good and Neutral and Bad and downright Evil; the way someone can get away with helping those in need of it without coming to harm and in turn the way that another can do the opposite - and, alas, the way that one can do harm and face no consequences... or do good and face all of them, do neither and coast along...

Sometimes, Lucy wishes she still had the power (though, she never used it unless  _absolutely required)_ to command an execution; the horrors she sees in the news daily as the war carries on, gets worse and worse and doesn't seem to end, her two experiences in Narnia one of the only things keeping her going through it all. 

The nineteen-forties pass and Lucy grows. She has visited Narnia three times, and will only visit it for these three. First, when she was about eight - until she was about  _twenty-six,_ and then, second - when she was about eleven, for only what amounted to a month, at  _most,_ and then, again - when she was nearly fifteen, and suddenly, unfortunately, sadly -

Too old. She is too old, now, too -  _far_ too old, though that hadn't mattered the first time. Lucy isn't bitter; Aslan knows more than she, after all - and knows it far better. And she follows his advice; finds him in her world, in this mostly blue, round little earth - finds him in scripture, in the holy texts, and while Jesus is similar, he's not the  _same,_ and that suits Lucy just fine. Jesus was a man, as fallible as any other, and so she can pretend, somewhat, that Aslan had something of that fallibility, too. 

It's a comfort, no matter how ridiculous, to think that, by chance, Aslan made some mistakes, just as she, as Edmund, as Peter and Susan had. As Caspian and Mr Tumnus, as - as everyone that she's ever known must have, at some point.

Lucy is a girl with a lion heart - a little lioness. Aslan's Most Favoured, if people are feeling honest. She'll never be a tall one, always on the small side, on the side of looking tiny and helpless, if the person looking didn't know any better. 

They usually didn't.

Lucy keeps up with her skills. She may not have her miracle medicine, but battlefield healing serves her well - bombed out streets, houses collapsing, someone hit by shrapnel here and thrown across the street there, a broken bone here and a gash there. She remembers her time as Queen, as Queen Lucy The Valiant, remembers her time as a legend among legends, and is kind to those that need it, and harsh to those that need that, too. She's too old, now, for Narnia - so she'll make her magic here, a little kingdom for herself, out of friends and foes alike, no matter how much pettier the squabbles are than they were, back when she had to think in terms of people and country.

Now, she dons a loaned jacket, marches with a group of lionesses, and favours listening to the advice of her friends, and not so much the trees. There is magic here - but it leads you astray, and when you're helping one girl get out of a bad lot, helping a boy avoid a gang, helping little shops fight against overwhelming odds of war and death, from the shells and from the gangs, those groups of  _idiots_ who don't understand how much harder they're making it for King and Country to make it out of this war unscathed... well, being led astray is unhelpful.

Lucy pauses, goes back, checks herself.  _Prime minister,_ of course. Parliamentary Monarchy, or so she's heard. The Kings and Queens of England make no more decisions than her and her siblings' advisors did - they sign off on parliament, Lucy thinks, and they do have some power - but not the kind Lucy did, once upon a time.

Lucy's little girl gang has a war cry, though the others don't understand it. They know her strange little proclivities; praying to a lion god - from what they don't understand of Aslan - and talking to the trees, listening to the wind and the songs it sings. 

They allow her this; "For Aslan!" They cry, and to hear it brings joy, even though here it has no meaning. 

Sometimes, to try and make it feel like it does, Lucy visits the zoo. She goes through all the areas, speaks with all the animals. She makes a day out of it, at least once a month - even the most devoted of animal fanatics give her odd little looks at this queer behaviour; she doesn't think it so. It's only polite, and indeed - maybe, if she talks to them enough, they may learn to speak once more, if they ever knew it before. 

But, of course, she spends the most time near the Lion's Den. There is a big male, there, colouring somewhat off, mane too dark, pelt too light, but... he's there, and he looks as fearsome and as gentle as Aslan once was, and Lucy is no small eleven-year-old girl no more. She doesn't approach the lion as she did the bear - she understands, now, what it is like, to be locked away from the magic that gave you life. 

When she visits the Lions, sometimes, a friend comes. Sometimes more. Over time, more of them do, and over time, the zoo day becomes a staple event her gang attends. It is a day of peace, and calm, and respect, and on this day, sometimes they meet with the more dangerous sort, the more undesirable aspects of a war-torn country; those that would capitalise on other's desperation and destitution, instead of simply being driven to crime out of those two things themselves. 

On those days, there is no blood on Lucy's knife, no bruises on her knuckles. Just a clear conscience and a new ally, and more people in her little group, more people in her little Kingdom. 

More people to shout "For Aslan!" Without knowing what it truly  _means,_ and more people to see her praying, to see her listening to the wind and talking to the trees.

"Valiant's a bit... off, isn't she?" She hears. Lucy is sat under a willow tree, near the edge of a lake. She looks over the water and remembers a great, bearded man, larger than life, bigger than even a giant, brought about by Aslan's roar and the hostiles in his territory, wading through his waters. 

"Don't say that," Her closest advisor says, a low rumble - they are lionesses, her people, and it reflects in the way they talk, move, the way they hold themselves. 

"But she  _is,"_ The new cub says, shaking her head and making those bright orange curls of hers bounce about. Lucy used to be envious of Susan, but now she looks at this one's mane and tampers down any feelings it brings about.

Envy and jealousy never got her anywhere. 

blonde and grey-eyed, fairer than anyone Lucy has none save the White Witch, and perhaps even more so, her advisor near growls. "She's  _not,"_ She says. "She's  _devout._ Just 'cause you've never 'eard of 'er religion, don't mean it's  _crazy._ "

"She talks to the trees,  _'Tilda,"_ The ginger cub says.

"Part o' the whole spiritual, worshipin' nature thing she's go' goin' on," Her advisor replies. " _and don' call me tha' on mission!"_

"Sorry, right, of course," Ginger says, wincing. She adjusts her jacket, a loaned one like Lucy had in the beginning. Everyone here supplies their own 'armour', supplies their own weapons - it's a hodge-podge militia to serve her landless Kingdom, and it suits Lucy and her wild ways just fine. 

* * *

Peter rules. He grows, as he'd done once before - ages a few years, returns to Narnia, and can never go back - and he rules. He can't help it; once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen.

And Peter was King.  _The High King._ High King Peter the Magnificent. 

Lucy plays armies and kingdoms with her friends (it will get more serious, and he won't notice) while Susan pretends it all never happened, in that way Susan does - diligently, efficiently, learning to navigate school and England's social circles as quickly as she adapted to diplomacy and ruling a kingdom and shooting a many dead with an arrow straight through the eye. She's as deadly with words now as she was then, with the longbow - and that doesn't tire, either, he knows; not when she goes to the range every Sunday she can and doesn't part with the longbow they leant her, ever. 

Susan starts riding horses for sport, at the same time as she dons new fashions and wears lipstick and high heels; she trains as if for war, at the same time as she gossips and networks and pursues a higher form of education. 

And Peter rules. He gets through school, and people don't forget he picked fights, joined fights, fought multiple people at once and attempted to make that fair on  _them,_ got bloody and bruised but no worse for wear than he left them. 

He deserves it, at least a bit, he thinks. He's gotten people killed in wars; and outside, the bombs fall. Some of his classmates, these children who are his peers, they will sign up and die, or see others killed - and maybe these little brawls will prepare them, at least a little. 

Peter knows this. He can see it in the way they read the papers, listen to the radio stations play their wartime propaganda; he knows this, because he wrote some himself. Speeches and half-truths and boosting morale, he remembers it well - all of it, not all of it, only some of it; he remembers big battles and little moments, remembers that faun loved the colour lilac and the taste of the oldest wine in the cellar and educating others in archery and had braided Lucy's hair on occasion but can't remember her name. 

It began with an L, he thinks, and sighs. 

And Peter rules.

He does it simply. Peter's presence is not necessarily commanding; not here, in this strange uncomfortable, drab world called earth that is his homeland, if not his home... but that doesn't stop him from expecting it to be so. There is something that comes from over a decade of ruling, and that is the expectation you will be listened to, looked up to, automatically given command. It is not in Peter's nature - never has been, really - to listen to authority figures; he  _is_ one, now, and so the only ones he will listen to are himself and his siblings, and the advisors they pick up along the way. 

And when you act like something isn't out of the ordinary, if you act like you know what you're doing, if you act like someone worth following - generally, the bystanders will. Those who look for power and align themselves with it - Peter was a High King, and in necessity a diplomat, a military leader, a man who had to make all the hard decisions that didn't fall to Edmund or Susan (or Lucy, but they don't like to think about that now, even though they think about the time when she was not small, not a child, but a capable woman, the Valiant Queen Lucy, more often than they'd care to admit, mostly because they'd have to admit they pretended she'd never grown up - at least, him and Susan, for the latter part, anyway -) 

And so, Peter rules.

He gathers a little following, almost entirely by accident and happenstance. It just happens; Peter isn't commanding, not here, but he's  _inspiring,_ still, he never lost that, not in the backwards time between Narnia and Here. He's still strong, in the way leaders should be - still a King at heart, always a King at heart. He keeps that mantra close to himself - Once a King or Queen, Always a King or Queen, and drops the Narnia because it doesn't, can't, and won't ever again apply to  _him_ anymore, but it doesn't change the fact that it  _happened._

Once. Always. 

And so, Peter  _rules._

Peter climbs the social ladder quicker than expected - after the whole Telmarine affair, he's not so easily offended by a lack of obedience. He's not a King in anything but Legend and soul, any more, and so he's no longer angered as harshly by minor issues, like being bumped into and the perpetrator not apologising. 

It was petty, he thinks back, to that second-long-month, in comparison to everything that followed.

Peter gave up his crown back home. It was right, it was good, it was what he should have done, he'd do it over and over again if he only had the chance to see Narnia once more. But he won't. He never will. 

But he won't give it up here. Even if he can't have it genuinely - he's not like Lucy in that regard, isn't going to build himself a militia and a micronation, isn't going to somehow find a way to found a new religion - but he will march straight into battle, "For Aslan!" Ringing from his lips, and he's old enough now.

Peter joins the army. 

And Peter rules. 

His regiment - well, it's not  _his,_ these aren't  _his_ men,  _his_ troops; his troops are a world away and a thousand years ago, and he's only nineteen here, too young, in the eyes of this world, to lead anything - but these brothers in arms of his, they're  _his_ regiment, really. 

Peter Pevensie climbs the ranks of the army and dearly wishes that in this world, in this time, leaders could follow their men into battle. He almost misses the way wars were fought, back There - it's only mild, though, only in passing. If they were, both a lot more and a lot fewer people would be dead. 

It's a catch 22, he thinks. To change the style of warfare you need to save lives and kill many; to save lives and kill many, you need to change the style of warfare. 

Peter has a following, now, people loyal to  _him._ Here, in this world - it has nothing to do with the legend, with High King Peter the Magnificent, and here, that's a weight off of his shoulders. He's a King at heart, in soul and mind (Always a King or Queen, remember; Once,  _Always)_ but not in title. It shows, he thinks; he thinks if it were common, many of these brave men would swear an oath of fealty. 

They fight. Peter rules and they win. 

It's never that simple, though.  _They_ win. But battles; rarely the wars - King and Country are winning fewer and fewer wars, taking part in less and less conflict.

Peter gets injured. He can fight, still, it's nothing major, but - Peter's worth more to the army than dead on the front lines. 

Worth more to very  _certain_ people. Peter gets honourably discharged, and Lucy smiles at him.

"You can't be King," She says. "Leading a country is a lot more politics and diplomacy than it once was - and also, a lot  _less."_

"What, are you suggesting politics?" Peter asks. 

"I'm suggesting you support Susan," Lucy's still smiling. Her eyes drift, and Peter follows her gaze to the tree across the road. "I'd like her in Downing Street, wouldn't you?" 

"There's a certain ring to Primeinster Pevensie," Peter says. 

"Maybe you could lead the home defence branch," Lucy suggests. "I'm not one for politics, really - not Here's way about it, anyway - but leading something military related could do you some good."

"What about you?" He asks.

"Oh, I'm doing well," Lucy's smile widens. "We're helping a lot of people. I'm training to be a proper doctor - nurse first, true, but I'll get there - and we were thinking about going around and doing some good."

"You've been doing a lot of good," Peter says.

"Yes, but not enough to get a place to make ours," Lucy says. "I want to have a headquarters, somewhere. Maybe in the woods."

"A little village in the trees?" Peter asks.

"Don't be silly," Lucy laughs. "I wouldn't want to disturb them. A nice clearing should do - well hidden, and the trees should protect us."

"Why would you need that?" Peter asks. 

"Declaring a micronation is all well and good," Lucy says, frankly, "But you need somewhere to have it."

* * *

Edmund... grows up.

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, as Eustace likes to call it, was his last grand adventure. Now, Edmund is on his final great journey through his teens and his twenties, and he couldn't be gladder to see the back of being seventeen, because he's seen it before, and somehow, this time around was more difficult than trying to rule a kingdom was before he even remotely needed to shave. 

Being a king at  _ten_ was easier than being seventeen  _twice._ That sort of thing really messes with your head, Edmund's found. He's lived this life twice over, seen the way he grows before it's happened when it happened before, and wonders whether it was cruel or not of Aslan, to allow them that decade in Cair Parvell, when they were never to belong to Narnia, not truly, not really. 

Those were the happiest  _minutes_ of his life, Edmund knows. Not the first few seconds, of course, those seconds that contained everything up to the coronation - but the seconds after that? The minutes? They were wonderful, and he wouldn't trade the world for them. They are  _his,_ and his siblings', and no-one else's.

Besides. He's had the world offered to him before, and frankly, the cost is never worth it. 

So. Edmund... grows up. He graduates, pursues education to mastery, pursues it as far as he can go. He joins forces with Lucy, sometimes, to help her stir up trouble for the worse elements of society during wartime, he joins forces with Peter to keep the local youths in line, he joins forces with Susan to gather information and network because you never know who might be useful and what might be nice to know later down the line. Peter goes off to war, and Edmund does his time in service, too, because he feels like he should, he feels like there should always be at least one person on a squad that knows what they're getting into. 

After his service in the military - after he keeps to the objective of his orders if not the methods, after he plans and scouts and does a little too well - he's discharged due to 'injury' and recommended for the secret service, if only because his commanding officer wanted nothing to do with  _another_ Pevensie, this one potentially even more disruptive than the last.

Which isn't exactly  _true._ Peter was, is, the High King; Peter follows no orders, but Edmund follows his. Of the two, Edmund is more likely to play by the rules - if not to the spirit of them. 

They were kings, once, in a distant yet so tantalisingly close at hand land of legend. 

Edmund, who was, during their twenties, a very diplomatic (spy) of a King, King Edmund the Just, who'd stopped wars before they'd started, like Susan, but most of the time in vastly differing ways; King Edmund the Just, who had seen right and wrong and done right and wrong and knew the power of second chances, became a spy, again. 

He'd had three chances at Narnia, which was three more than most get. It was time, however reluctant he may be about it, to move on. 

So. Edmund... grows up. 

(This world has magic, Lucy says. In the wind, in the trees, in the air that you breathe; in the silence of the animals, in the nature of man. Edmund finds it also, but in a vastly more apparent form. And maybe it's not so much magic - but aliens and the like are quite magical, if you think about it from the right perspective.)

(He gets transferred to Torchwood, though that's  _another_ story.)

* * *

Susan wears nylons and lipstick and high heels, and she 'forgets'. 

Susan rides horses for sport and goes to medieval faires and laughs at all they get wrong, she practices archery and doesn't slack on her use of a knife, and 'forgets'. 

She politics and mediates and soothes relations and joins parliament and 'forgets'. 

Susan never mentions Narnia, never mentions Aslan, and 'forgets'. 

Because she can't go back. And there's no use blathering on about something she can't change, in a world where she can do _so much good._

And what Aslan said was right, in a way; he was here, in various forms - Lucy thinks Jesus, and that works just fine for Susan. She can pray to her god without looking strange, and that's useful in her line of work. A woman trying for Prime minister, especially at her (supposedly) young age has a lot of climbing to do, and none of it easy, particularly. 

Susan looks at her competition, so laughably young, so unbearably old, and wonders when she became some strange immortal. She's mortal, of course; what she means, is her perspective. She's been a child, been a woman, been a woman in a child's body, been a woman in a child's body in a time a thousand years past her own one, in a body older than that of the one she'd had before those fateful five minutes - 

She's a thousand, three hundred, and probably something older than Caspian, who is likely hundreds of years older than all of these people, what with five minutes being about a decade, sometimes, and others shorter or longer stretches of time. 

She's a strange, mortal-immortal, looking at these people who've lived so little in so long, and she thinks - I can do better than they will. I  _have_ done better. 

And she will.

And to do that... Susan 'forgets'. 

(When she's put in place, the magic of this world is brought to her attention, by a man stepping through the painting in her office. It doesn't shock her as much as it rather should a normal, 'muggle' woman such as herself, but she pays that no mind. Here, she is not Susan the Gentle, Queen of Narnia; she is Susan Pevensie, Prime minister, and if a wizard with some nifty parlour tricks thinks he can startle the Unflappable Woman, he's wrong.)

* * *

They grow, they change, the Pevensie children do. They are no longer children, no longer stuck in a perpetual loop of ageing-deaging, transporting from one world (homeland) to another ( _home),_ as they are grounded. They are stuck, frankly - right here, on this round planet. 

Eustace goes to Narnia, but only Lucy wants to hear his stories. 

* * *

Edmund... grows up.

Peter rules. 

Lucy is a lioness in human skin.

And Susan 'forgets'.

* * *

Caspian visits, apparently. He died, it seems. Susan is too busy to think on it overmuch, though it hurts anyway. 

She's never told the whole story. Cruelty or kindness; a question for the ages. 

* * *

Most of a family does not die in a train crash. They have left Narnia behind, as it has left them; Lucy has found it  _here,_ and has no interest in returning to a place so different once again - because perhaps, now, decades later, even the most mundane of magic is gone from that world, while here, it exists in spades. Edmund is settled in his life, as is Susan, and Peter also. They all are, really, truly grown; adults or old, depending on when you check in on them, with families of their own. 

And magic is here; in the form of wizards with wands, or strange rifts under Cardiff - if you just know where to look. 

* * *

"For Aslan! For Aslan!" Lucy's people shout. "For Narnia!"

Susan is a very good diplomat, very good politician - it was not hard to get Narnia recognised as a micronation, not hard to find some spare, empty land to hand over. 

It attracts all sorts of people; people who want a fresh start; people who like the idea of it; people who just want to see it for themselves; and people who need the safety of no judgement. 

Everyone is welcome in Narnia, so long as the laws are followed. Lucy is a Queen, though calling her that might get them all raised eyebrows - they do it anyway because that is the Narnian way. Cair Paravell is a shack then a hut then a stone building then a small fort, then a beautiful little replica of itself. Lucy remembers the buildings of her old kingdom well, but she changes them - she doesn't want it to be the  _same._ She wants it to be  _better._ Peter moves, eventually. Edmund becomes a liaison of sorts, and Lucy badgers the annoying magicals into being a little more lenient with Narnia, and only Narnia.

Narnia is for magic, Lucy says. And they listen. Narnia is for magic, She tells Torchwood, and they wonder how she got in. 

* * *

Of course, the train still crashes. 

But... life moves on. It was Aslan, anyway, they know that; it's hard not too. The rings are a dead give away that Narnia is involved, at least in some form. 

And in the end, they'll all go beyond the sea to Aslan's Country, so there's nothing to mourn, really. 

* * *

The Pevensies are never forgotten, though Scrubb fades, as does many other names. In all worlds, the Pevensie four are legends; in all worlds, their friends and foes and allies fade from memory.

But there is an immortal man. (Two, in fact.)

and a hidden world.

and another, alternate plane.

And all of them - they can't forget. 

* * *

Valiant, Just, Magnificent, Gentle. 

Lioness, agent, leader, unflappable. 

(Two worlds. Eight legends.)

* * *

(Narnia  **ends.** But it lives on.)

( _"For Aslan! For Narnia!")_

_("What does that mean?" "It's unfortunate - but our history books don't really say. We think Valiant Queen Lucy the Lioness might have had some peculiar religious beliefs, but it doesn't quite explain the simultaneous existence of various religions - like she'd cobbled together something from the scraps of everything else."_

_"Maybe she did."_

_"But why on earth would she do that?"_

_"Aslan, of course. Lion imagery is everywhere in what we can find of Narnia's history, right? like - she wanted to make something around him. So she used what people already knew, like... like she was trying to explain to them in words they'd understand what he was, what he meant."_

_"That's ridiculous. Aslan must have been a rather well-established figure; there's plenty of lion-shaped deities in other religions, it's likely he's as cobbled together as the rest of them. She stole Bacchus, after all - and also interchangeably calls him Dionysus, which is hell on the records. Merlin, he could be Jesus. There's a resurrection theme throughout Aslan's story, from what we can gather from the art and the documents that survived."_

_"You historians have no imagination."_

_"Yeah, that one's a bit of a stretch.")_

* * *

Magic seeps back into the world. Narnia grows, as other countries die, shrink, end their lifespans. 

Someone finds a way - and the cycle begins anew. 

* * *

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> For When The Sunset Turns To Gold, the waters run and there you'll be - a hand to hold, sitting here, at the end of the world with me; in Aslan's Country.  
> \- Lucy Pevensie, 1953; 'Poems of a Lost World.'
> 
> Thought to be a religious text by some; this is debated heavily in academic circles, and most everyone seems keen to ignore the long-lived Narnians with their strange ways who'd probably know better about their own damned King's ancestors book, for goodness sake. 
> 
> They change their tune quick-like, of course.
> 
> (It's not a religious text, but there are religious themes, because Lucy Pevensie was as devout as it gets to Aslan, the Golden Lion; god, saviour, creator, teacher. 
> 
> 'devout as it gets to' here meaning 'a good friend of', of course, but only a select few know that, all these years later.)


End file.
